Counties across the United States levy property taxes on real property situated within their borders to help finance their operations. A tax bill is then sent by the county to the property owner. Thereafter, the taxes are typically paid by the owner of the real property. However, for a variety of reasons, sometimes the taxes on a given piece of real property are not paid in a timely manner. Thereafter, the counties undertake to obtain the taxes they are owed.
Counties utilize the state tax codes to obtain the money they are owed from unpaid real property taxes. The applicable tax code for the different states can be broadly separated into three categories: (1) tax lien states; (2) tax deed states; and (3) tax lien/tax deed hybrid states. In tax lien states and tax lien/tax deed hybrid states, counties conduct sales of tax liens to investors. When the owner of a piece of real property with a tax lien pays their taxes, the buyer of the tax lien receives their principal (i.e., the face amount of the tax lien which they purchased) and some amount of a monetary benefit on their principal. The amount of the monetary benefit varies with each jurisdiction and the buyer of a tax lien can influence their ultimate return on investment by the amount they bid for a given tax lien, such as, for example, by paying only the face amount of the lien or paying a large or small premium over the face amount of the tax lien.
Several problems exist with the current tax lien system. In large part, the existing tax lien system is inefficient for counties to administer and fails to maximize revenues to help finance county operations. This results in lost potential additional revenues and increased costs to the counties. Another problem, as recognized by the present inventors, is that a system does not exist for placing available tax liens into categories or subsets to facilitate comparison of tax liens for purchase by investors. Yet another problem is that in the process of selling tax liens, some tax liens may go unsold. This creates a difficult situation for the county government, because they are not maximizing tax-lien related revenues to pay their staff, vendors or the cost of services provided by the county to its citizens and members of the public. Still yet another problem, as recognized by the present inventors, is that, from the investor's standpoint, it is difficult to buy tax liens from more than one county because in many states the counties conduct their tax lien auctions on the same day.
The foregoing problems result in inefficiencies in the tax lien system that can be improved. Accordingly, as recognized by the present inventors, there is a need for additional systems and/or methods that address one or more of the problems or shortcomings noted above.